Brain injury tied to malaria drug, doctor says

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2012/06/military-brain-injury-tied-to-malaria-drug-doctor-says-061312/

An Army physician who spent his career studying the malaria drug mefloquine, also known as Lariam, asked Congress on June 6 to support research on brain injuries he says can be caused by the medication.

Speaking before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Maj. Remington Nevin requested funding for a mefloquine research center at a civilian medical or public health school to investigate the physiology, epidemiology, clinical diagnosis and treatment of health issues related to mefloquine.

Given our research commitments to post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury this observation calls for a similarly robust agenda into mefloquine neurotoxic brain injury to ensure that patients with these conditions are receiving accurate diagnoses and the very best medical care, Nevin said.

An epidemiologist and preventive medicine expert, Nevin published a case study in March of a sailor who developed psychosis, short-term memory loss, confusion and personality change after taking mefloquine. Nevin believes the drug caused lesions to form in the patients brain stem.

He has published previous work similarly raising concerns about mefloquine, developed under the Armys malaria drug discovery program from 1963 to 1976 to prevent and treat malaria.

Anecdotal reports of severe mefloquine reactions abound, including one presented in May at the American Psychiatric Association meeting in Philadelphia by Army Maj. Jerald Block, who discussed the case of a previously normal soldier who developed psychoses while deployed to Afghanistan.

According to Block, the service member reported vivid dreams of a frightening dragon which later appeared to him during the daytime as the soldier cleaned his weapon.

Suspecting an adverse reaction to mefloquine, Block prescribed an alternative malaria therapy and the atypical antipsychotic quetiapine, or Seroquel, to halt the psychotic episodes.

The patient recovered.

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Brain injury tied to malaria drug, doctor says